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Nineteenth-Century Views of Japan by the Hiroshiges (I, II, III)

Curated by Barry Till. Ando Hiroshige (1797 – 1858), famous for his landscape paintings, is also considered one of the most dominant figures of Japanese printmaking. During his lifetime, Hiroshige was well known and commercially successful in Japan. Ando Hiroshige died in 1858 at the age of 62 in Edo, with an output of an estimated 5,400 prints. His prints eventually found their way to Europe and would have an important impact on the Post Impressionists, especially Van Gogh.

In 1845, Ando Hiroshige adopted his pupil Chinpei Suzuki, who took the name Hiroshige II. After his mentor’s death, Hiroshige II continued to work in his masters style and married Otatsu, an adopted daughter of Hiroshige. They were later divorced. Otatsu remarried another pupil of her father named Shigemasa, who from then on called himself Hiroshige III (1842 to 1896). The work of Hiroshige III was very different from that of Hiroshige I and II, depicting images such as trains, brick buildings and foreigners, which show the modernization of Japan in the late nineteenth-century.

The exhibition will feature famous prints by all three artists and a rare series of Hiroshige II prints donated by Mr. and Mrs. James Langley of Ottawa.